Friday 26 July 2013 04.44 EDT
First published on Friday 26 July 2013 04.44 EDT

A survey of the 32 councils in the West Midlands area shows that all the local authorities in the region are using social media, with 85% seeing this as an important channel of communication.

Our white paper, commissioned by Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands and co-written by sector experts comms2point0, is the first regional study of the use of social media channels in the area.

It revealed that elected members are far more ready to use social media than senior officers, with 85% of councils having social media-connected councillors compared to just 32.5% having a senior officer using a networking site like Twitter.

While our study showed that from rural Staffordshire and Shropshire to urban Coventry, Birmingham and the Black Country local government officers are using social media to connect, inform and listen. It also highlighted how much work still needs to be done.

Policies need to be developed: 42.5% of councils don't have any guidance on how to use social media but 97.5% expect their use of them to increase. Almost 40% said that trust and training were the biggest barriers, while 25% said that using social media had proved effective.

Our white paper also offers 11 recommendations on how to raise standards. We need to enable our staff to access social media and to bring elected members along with us, training them to understand and use it.

Guy Evans: 'Our Google+ page attracts worldwide followers'

In 2011 I set up a Google+ page. I added content regularly and the number of people in our circles increased slowly. Google emailed in 2013 and said they were interested in helping us promote our page to make us a good case study for local government.

They started the process by verifying the account and giving me some tips on posting content. A verified account is much easier to find on Google; it appears at the top right of the page when you Google search for "BCC". The number of people following us increased. We now have over 26,000 active users.

Our Google+ page attracts worldwide followers. I tend to post the same key messages as our other social media channels interspersed with more touristy content of events and activities that promote Birmingham as a great modern city.

Morgan Bowers: 'Twitter works as a direct line to our team'

I started tweeting two years ago. I never thought that our Twitter feed would meet with the success that it has, and to this day I'm still convinced it's more of a testament to how much the people of the West Midlands love wildlife.

My aim was to emulate @HotelAlpha9 – a tweeting police officer providing a glimpse into life on the beat. I wanted to give people a window on to a day in the life of a countryside ranger, and to find a way of using social media to engage people.

Through Twitter and Facebook, I can schedule and book events, surveys, projects and more, without ever needing to advertise. It also works as a direct line for people wanting to report findings to our team, ask questions about upcoming events, and even send in photos of their garden wildlife for identification.

We're building on what we do to give social media enquiries an equal footing. We already give social media enquiries a customer reference number – the next step is looking at how we can integrate our digital contacts into our new customer relationship management system. We're also exploring the financial savings that could come as a result of channel shift towards social media.

Kate Bentham: 'We've published our own ebook'

The Family Information Service works to expand the ways that parents can gain access to the quality information they need. In April 2012 the FIS published its first ebook, The Rainbow Pack, which is a 100-page handbook for parents of children with disabilities and additional needs.

The Rainbow Pack provides information to people who face additional barriers to accessing information to support them in their role as a parent.

As it is a handbook it was a perfect choice of publication for the Family Information Service to make available as an ebook. Downloading the pack enables parents to have access to the information either through their iPhone, iPad or Kindle device, and so to be able to refer to the contents as and when issues arise in their child's life and journey through services and support.